Saturday, May 17, 2008

Moscow, May 15, Interfax - The Orthodoxy excludes a possibility of existing extraterrestrial intelligence, the famous theologian and professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexey Osipov said.

"From the point of Orthodox theology, there're no grounds for talking about extraterrestrial civilizations that have reason and can create something," Osipov said to Interfax-Religion.

According to him, such position is based on the fact that "the New Testament lacks" allusions to extraterrestrial forms of intelligent life.

"Secondly, there have been very many people in the Church who reached highest degree of God-likeliness and sanctity but no one of them has ever mentioned them (extraterrestrial civilizations - IF), though they pointed out to many other things," Osipov said.

This argument was also important, he stressed.

Besides, the professor said that modern astronomy "advancing into the depth of the Universe still hasn't found any planet with the life similar to that on Earth."

"We have solid grounds to negate existence of any extraterrestrial intelligent civilization," he summed up.

Osipov noted that the Orthodox Church didn't consider this question on purpose to arrive to a certain conclusion. Though according to him, some theologians who studied the question of extraterrestrial civilization concluded that space world is very rich and there are phenomena, which remain unknown. But they believe these to be of astronomic character rather than of spiritual one.

According to the professor, there is still another view point which was expressed by Seraphim Rose, a "well-known hieromonk and deserving respect ascetic of the 20th century" who first studied Eastern philosophy, "was deeply involved in searching the truth and after long quests joined Orthodoxy."

Osipov noted that Rose admitted that there were "spirits who surround Earth and penetrate in human world and even influence certain people or some vital processes."

"He said that these spirits couldn't be attributed to holy spirits or angels and church language call them demons," Osipov said.